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Research

Dr. Kaufman teaches, advises, conducts research on global health policy issues and also works as the NY based Director for Academic Programs for the Schwarzman Scholars Program, a new one-year masters in global affairs modeled on the Rhodes Scholars program and based at Tsinghua University in China. She was previously the Director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia, Distinguished Scientist at Brandeis University, founder and Director of the AIDS Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the China team leader for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a public-private partnership based in New York. She has served as program officer for both the United Nations Population Fund and the Ford Foundation in their China offices. She holds a doctorate in public health from Harvard, was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and named as a Soros Reproductive Health and Rights fellow. Dr. Kaufman speaks Mandarin and has lived in China for more than 15 years, working closely with the government and key donors on many aspects of HIV prevention and service provision and community participation, reproductive health improvement, and women’s rights achievement. Her research projects focus on building the capacity for government and nongovernmental-organization collaboration on China’s AIDS response, improving reproductive health services for poor women, developing and evaluating mental health counseling interventions for AIDS orphans, and examining social policies and demographic evidence related to the impacts of China’s one-child population policy. She has collaborated with global research networks aimed at improving the integration of HIV/AIDS and reproductive health services and to improve women’s participation in health planning in poor communities in Asia and Africa aimed at reducing maternal mortality and morbidity and improving diagnosis and treatment of reproductive-tract infections. Current projects include a focus on China’s health aid to Africa, China’s increasing participation in global health governance mechanisms, and an in-depth examination of adolescent health needs in China and globally. Her overall research and teaching focuses on gender, population and global health policy and governance issues including health and trade, health and climate change, emerging infectious diseases and health security.

Biography

Joan Kaufman, MA, MS, ScD, is the Director for Academic Programs for the Schwarzman Scholars Program. She is also a lecturer on global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. She was previously the director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia, founder and director of the AIDS Public Policy Program as well as principal and faculty affiliate of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and distinguished scientist and senior lecturer at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. From 2012-2016 she directed Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia, one of eight global centers working with the university to lead work on issues of global concern, and was Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health. From 2008-2011, she was the associate director for academics for the masters in science program in international health policy and management, one of two sustainable international development master’s degree programs at the Heller School, Brandeis University. Dr. Kaufman also worked as the China team leader for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative from 2002 to 2012. Dr. Kaufman was the first UNFPA international program officer in China in the 1980s and from 1996 to 2001, she was the Ford Foundation’s reproductive health program officer for China based in Beijing.

She spent 2001–2002 as a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard and 2005-2006 as a Soros reproductive health and rights fellow. In 2002, she founded the AIDS Public Policy Project at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a program which trained government officials in China and Vietnam about the multi-sectoral and governance requirements for an effective HIV/AIDS response.

She holds a doctorate in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, master’s degrees in Asian studies and health and medical sciences from UC Berkeley, and BA cum laude in Chinese studies from Trinity College. She has published widely on AIDS, reproductive health, gender, population and international health policy, emerging infectious diseases, and civil society and health with a focus on China.

Publications

Community-based mental health counseling for children orphaned by AIDS in China.

Joan Kaufman, :A Billion and Counting: Family Planning Campaigns and Policies in the People's Republic of China." San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1983.

Chapters in Books

Joan Kaufman, “Involvement of Civil Society Organizations in National AIDS Programs in China: Impact of the new Foreign NGO Law on China’s AIDS response.” In Confronting HIV/AIDS in the era of rapid political/economic change in China edited by Zunyou Wu, Roger Detels, Marc Bulterys (Springer, forthcoming)

Zhang Beichuan and Joan Kaufman “The Rights of People with Same Sex Sexual Behavior: Recent Progress and Continuing Challenges in China” in Geeta Misra and Radhika Chandiramani editors, Sexuality, Gender and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and South East Asia, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005, pp. 113-130.

Kaufman, Joan “SARS and China’s Health System Response: Better to be both Red and Expert!” in Arthur Kleinman and James L. Watson, eds, SARS in China: Prelude to Pandemic? Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005, pp. 53-68.

Kaufman, Joan, Zhang Erli, Xie Zhenming, “Family Planning Quality of Care in China: Scaling Up a Pilot Project into a National Reform Program” in From Pilot Projects to Policies and Programs: Strategies for Scaling Up Innovations in Health Service Delivery Geneva: World Health Organization, 2005, pp. 65-83.

Kaufman, Joan, “Financing, Provision, and Use of Reproductive Health Services in Rural China”, The Implications of Health Sector Reform for Reproductive Health and Rights, Report of a Meeting of the Working Group for Reproductive Health and Family Planning, Center for Health and Gender Equity and the Population Council (NY: The Population Council, 1999)

Kaufman, Joan and Gita Sen, "Population, Health and Gender in Vietnam: Social Policies Under the Economic Reforms" in Bjorge Lunggren editor: The Challenge of Reform in Indochina (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Kaufman, Joan, "Adolescent Pregnancy and Sexuality: Lessons from the Developing World" in R. Morgan and B. Rao, editors, Global Learning for Health (Washington, D.C.: National Council for International Health, 1993).